


Take the Spade from My Hands

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Series: Whumptober 2019 [9]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Angst, BAMF Cassandra Cain, Crying, Emotional Baggage, Fist Fights, Gen, Hurt Jason Todd, Hurt/Comfort, Jason Todd Has Issues, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Past Child Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Whump, Whumptober, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-28 17:10:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21140237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: Jason let out a wild laugh as his fist flashed through the night. His knuckles connected, the blow reverberating up his arm, and the Bat staggered back.





	Take the Spade from My Hands

There was trouble in his veins. People in the old neighborhood used to say that about Willis. Trouble in his veins, as if that could explain why the man would ricochet from one fight to the next. They never said it while he was around, as far as Jason could tell, but they’d murmur it to each other or to his ma as they eyed the bin full of empty bottles or the bruises on Jason’s cheek. 

As a kid, Jason had wondered what trouble felt like, or if you could feel it at all. Did Willis know his body was running on trouble? Did it feel like pop rocks sparking, or like ants crawling in a line? Maybe it felt like lightning, and that’s why Willis was always exploding.

Jason knew better now. Trouble didn’t feel like anything at all. By the time you were full of it, trouble was all you were, and you didn’t feel it any more than you did the blood flowing down someone else’s face.

Anger, though, anger was a drug. Anger was power. Anger when combined with a hunger for vengeance was a chemical reaction, exothermic, combustive. He’d come back to Gotham high on both and on the hunt for the biggest fix.

“Getting slow, old man!” he taunted and reveled when the Bat flinched.

Words, words had power like anger, like a knife in the spine. His words were bullets, and he spit them out with the honed precision of a sniper. They struck home every time, doing more damage than the actual weapons he had buried in his opponent’s flesh. He hadn’t gone seeking the Bat tonight, but an encounter was inevitable, and he welcomed it. Each clash was a new high, each drop of blood spilled like gold coins lining his pocket.

Jason let out a wild laugh as his fist flashed through the night. His knuckles connected, the blow reverberating up his arm, and the Bat staggered back. The idiot kept trying to _talk_, like Jason wanted to listen. Like there was anything he could say that would change what had happened.

And doggone it all if Jason weren’t _winning_. It was hitting the lottery in lightning strikes.

“What’s the matter, old man? Too good to kill? Because that’s the only way to stop me.” He was riding high, so high, his helmet dripping with rain like blood. The lightning flashed and he could feel it in his veins, a thrum of power, because he was invincible. 

“Even then, it might not be enough,” Jason growled and took another swing. “Didn’t stick the first time, so you better make it good.”

The Bat had a hand raised, as if Jason could be stopped, as if he could be placated. Ol’ B, so self-righteous down to his marrow, so passive, so convinced there was a way this could end without a new grave. A hand couldn’t stop a gun. He, of all people, had to know that.

A sound swelled in the base of Jason’s throat, ready to release into a howl or a laugh, he didn’t know which. He would find out with the crack of the gun.

Jason didn’t see the shadow split from the others until it was on him. He turned just in time to get a forearm between him and it, which did little to save him. It was like being attacked by a cat in hurricane form. The blows came from every angle, rapid jabs that sent him reeling.

It was less of a fight and more of a one-sided beating. His attacker swirled like a ghost, enveloping him, battering him, impossible to catch. The gun went off once, firing with a roar of thunder, before being swept from his hand. The shadow howled louder than the storm, potent and furious.

Jason went down, helmet cracking against the asphalt. The Bat was shouting, and Jason thought it was at him until the blows stopped. The shadow crouched over him, a knee grinding into his vertebrae. He groaned through gritted teeth. A hand splayed against his visor and pulled his head back until his neck strained and spots danced in front of his eyes.

Out of the corner of his vision, he saw a symbol, no more than a silhouette rimmed with a thin line of gold.

_Babs?_ Not Babs. Barbara Gordon was gone, locked in her tower, and her Batgirl was the black of night and the purple of royalty and the yellow of a full harvest moon, not–

The shadow hissed, the noise rattling from behind the mouthless mask. The hairs on Jason’ arms rose, trilling with the brief but unshakeable certainty that Batgirl had been transformed into a Ringwraith.

“Batgirl.” That was the Bat again, leaning crumpled and bleeding against the far brick wall, voice nearly firm like he didn’t have a dagger sticking in him up to the hilt.

The shadow, the force, the Batgirl hissed again, so low it was nearly a growl. Its—her?—fingers tightened across his visor, and Jason could swear he could feel the pressure in his skull. She bent low, until the blank void of her mask hovered next to the audio sensor on the right side of his helmet.

“Mine.” The sounds were unlinked, clicking together like beads on a loose chain, all the more menacing for their clumsiness. _Mmm ahy NNNNN._

Hidden behind his mask, Jason flinched as she leaned in even closer, the animal part of his brain braced for the mask to suck inward to reveal nothing but a bottomless void or some other horror.

“_Mine_,” she said again, then, muscles tightening as if preparing for a mighty feat, a horror of sounds that slowly solidified into “Family.”

How? How had the Bat managed to leash a demon? Jason choked back a hysterical laugh only to grunt as she drove his head into the ground and hissed the two words again.

Crude but effective. He got the message. This creature, this black-garbed nightmare, had claimed herself a Bat. She was Cerberus guarding Hades and would rip him apart if he hurt what was under her protection.

The Bat didn’t kill. That was the whole problem. He didn’t kill and everyone knew it, but for the first time Jason found himself wondering about those in the Bat’s orbit. The pressure on his back increased and he wheezed futilely.

And then it was gone. The new Batgirl was on the other side of the alley now, bending her shoulder to lift the Bat to his feet. The Bat was a behemoth next to her, looming and contorting to fit across the span of her arms. She looked tiny, but the presence of her filled the entire space.

They were both preoccupied, limbs tangled with support or bleeding from injuries. Jason could have rushed them then, pushed himself off the ground and charged in one fatalistic explosion. Instead he lay where he had been left, bitter, beaten, broken, trouble leaking out to stain the earth.

* * *

Trouble had a feeling after all. It felt like vomit cresting at the back of the throat. It felt like the crunch of broken bones in a busted hand. It felt like a tilt-a-whirl he couldn’t get off. Every time he leapt for the edge, desperate to hurl himself to safety, to stillness, inertia dragged him back in.

Trouble felt like sitting in the dark on cracked kitchen tile, knowing he had screwed up for the last time.

He had tried so hard, and that was what hurt. Failing when you didn’t really try was inevitable, fated, accepted. But he had _tried_ and he’d still blown it. What was the point? What did it matter if he tried and still screwed up? If he was nothing but trouble, what was the point of being anything else?

But he wanted. He wanted to have so much more, to _be_ so much more. And he’d failed.

Jason screamed and slammed his fist back against the cupboards he was sitting against. Then again. And again. The broken bones in his hand shrieked in protest. It was what he deserved.

_Can’t just keep your big mouth shut, always running your fat mouth, stupid, worthless, always in the way, you stupid brat, shut up, keep quiet, shut that big mouth before I shut it for you—_

It had been a long time since Willis had come howling out of the dark, but he was harder to escape when he was all Jason saw in the mirror.

The little room glittered in the dark. Broken glass on the floor caught moonlight and set the night shimmering. A constant stream of tears blurred Jason’s vision, capturing that same light and turning his sight silver amid the black.

He didn’t notice her come in until she was standing before him, soft-booted feet deliberately scuffing against the spray of glass.

Cass. She hadn’t been Batgirl in ages, hadn’t been that snarling, uncanny creature for even longer. She was Cass, Cassandra, the princess. His sister, maybe. But Jason had never forgotten her promise, and she’d never become less of a threat. She was the one who scared him, out of all of them. Shiva born, League raised, Bat trained, and loyal down to the cell.

She had warned him. Jason knew now that she wouldn’t kill him. More than any of the others, she aligned herself closest with Bruce’s morality. But Jason also knew death wasn’t necessarily the only or even the worst consequence one could offer.

_Mine,_ she had said. _Family._ Hurt what was hers and she would make him suffer.

He didn’t care. He’d earned it. He didn’t know when to shut up, always took the fight a step too far. If he’d just kept his mouth shut, just kept his head, if he hadn’t kept picking and goading and challenging, maybe the night wouldn’t have gone so far south. That he had broken his fist on a wall in his own apartment, instead of in the Cave on Bruce’s face, meant nothing. There were consequences worse than death and there were words worse than a blow.

Cass hadn’t moved. She was backlit by the window, her face cast into shadow, but he could feel her gaze running over him.

“I know, okay?” Jason moaned, voice bitter and deep like coffee grounds in a garbage disposal. “I screwed up.”

He passed his hand—the unbroken one—over his eyes. He thought about apologizing, but rejected that idea almost immediately. Cass wasn’t the one he needed to apologize to. His apologies were too well-worn to be worth much anyways.

She still hadn’t moved.

“Well?” Jason demanded. “What are you waiting for?”

He flung his arms wide. “Get on with it already.”

Whatever it was, he could take it. Might even make him feel better, to see some of the guilt bleed away.

She shuffled forward, feet carefully pushing glass shards aside to make a path. When she reached Jason’s side, she crouched, and he watched her through still-watering eyes. He wouldn’t flinched. He never flinched when he knew a blow was coming.

Still, it was a near thing when Cass reached out and took his broken hand in hers. She studied it, turning it this way and that, prodding the shattered little bones with soft, deft touches. Then she lifted her hand and flicked him once, hard, on the cheek. Jason startled.

“You hurt my family,” Cass snarled.

He knew. He knew, he knew, he—

Her fingers turned against his cheek and wiped at the tears.

“Hurt my family, “ she repeated.

Jason stared.

Cass lowered herself out of the crouch and sat hip to knee with Jason. She cradled his broken hand in hers.

“Mine.” The word was no louder than the rain had been, but it was steady and sure. “You hurt my family, brother. Don’t.”

Cass tipped her head and rested her cheek against his shoulder. She stayed while he wept.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "Thistle & Weeds" by Mumford and Sons, which was what was playing when I finally figured out this fic. I'd been sitting on the concept for nearly a year, but Whumptober seemed like a good time to wheel it out.


End file.
